On Taking the Safety

The 2003 Patriots, vying for the top playoff seed in the AFC, faced the Denver Broncos in week 9 of their season. (If you don’t care about football, stay with me for a minute. It might be worth it.) They were coming off a grueling game against the Browns and Denver got off to a good start. After some back and forth scoring, the Patriots found themselves down a point on fourth down at their own one yard line, with only 2:51 left to play. That’s when Bill Belichick did something a bit shocking: he called a play that resulted in an intentional safety, giving the Broncos 2 additional points.

We all experience overwhelming seasons of life. Well, I assume we all do. I know I certainly do. Times when the yards I need to make up and the time left on the clock leave me feeling overwhelmed. My inclination is to keep pushing. Dig deeper. Sleep less. Work harder. And sometimes that’s what the situation calls for. Being a responsible adult is not easy. But there are times when you need to take the safety.

When you take the safety, you are giving up something in order to gain something better. That’s what Belichick did. He gave up two points in order to gain field position. He trusted that his number one rated defense could stop the Broncos (which they did) and his superstar quarterback could come up with a touch down drive (which he also did). Belichick gave away the two points so that he could get his strongest assets in place at a key moment in the game, and his decision paid off.

When I think about taking a safety, I think about falling further behind in some things in order to put myself in a position to succeed down the road. I took a safety last week. I was behind at work. On top of that, I had to have a new fence built by the end of the week plus sermon prep to accomplish. We had a school activity scheduled for Friday as well. So I took a day off. That may not sound like much to you, but I just don’t take a lot of days off. As soon as I made the decision to take PTO, I could feel the stress lift off my shoulders. The inevitable delays in gathering material gave me time to think and pray, instead of making me feel like the clock was about to run out. I fell a little farther behind at work, but the emotional/spiritual benefit was well worth the decision. I could tell that internally, I had swapped field position. Instead of being down one point at my own yard line, I was down three points but in great field position and with a confident disposition.

I think there are a lot of people who are loathe to take a safety. They feel like they are moving backwards instead of forwards and it scares them. I found an unusual example of this in some of the counseling that I have engaged in with drug addicts. For example, I counseled one young man to enter into a long term (multiple months) Christian rehab program, but he didn’t want to lose the time with his young son. Unfortunately, his ongoing addiction resulted in him losing most contact with his son. A similar situation occurred with another young man, who didn’t want to lose his job and give up his savings. He later died of an overdose. These may seem like extreme circumstances, but I’m wondering if – at a lower level – many of us don’t do the same thing. We are so harassed by the amount of time on the clock and the yardage we have to cover that we put ourselves in a losing situation. It’s counterintuitive to take a rest when you have some much to do. It goes against our fleshly impulses to spend time in prayer when there is so much work that needs to be done. It violates our conceit to worship the true God with the people of God all the while acknowledging that I am not god.

Maybe this is why God was so severe with the Israelites about the Sabbath. You know, there was the guy who was stoned to death because he was gathering sticks on the Sabbath. Seems extreme. To the farmer, Saturday was one more day to work the fields. But maybe God had to be extreme in order to get a willful, self-reliant people to stop for a day. Maybe that’s why so many families spend their Sundays running around instead of worshiping and resting. And why so many families wake up on Monday less prepared to face the responsibilities of the week than they were on Friday evening.

When I think about how spiritual disciplines like prayer, worship, and meditating upon God’s Word are being displaced – not by laziness or worldliness – but by the seemingly insurmountable number of tasks that need to be accomplished in the modern world, I wonder if there aren’t a lot of Christians feeling like they are on their own one yard line with the clock running out. The human instinct is to run another desperation play and see if they can gain any yardage. The idea of retreating in order to advance is counterintuitive.

Missionaries on the field who have no backup find themselves working 14-16 hour days in order to reach as many as possible. But sometimes, they burn out. Or sometimes, they have affairs. Pastors work 60-80 hours per week to see to the health of their flock, but they, too, are burning out. Or sometimes, developing a drug habit.

So before you burn out, or take up a destructive habit, or cheat on your wife, or provoke your kids to wrath, why not consider taking a safety? Fall behind somewhere. Your strength is not in the might of your arm or the accuracy of your arrows, but in the Name of the Lord your God.